Which issues are the ones likely to swing a general election result ?

[Georgeduhamel]

Seems to be a big difference in real life outside MN and MN.
Most people I know are frustrated by the state of public services and the lack of money despite sky high taxes. Local schools are falling apart, NHS non functioning despite best efforts of the staff and our town centre is now reminiscent of an East European backwater in the 1970s with barely any shops and homeless folk on every corner. We also have a particularly inept Tory MP so I anticipate people will want to get rid of him.
Which things will affect your vote ? What’s most important ? In some respects I guess it depends on your personal situation and where you live. Leafy affluent home in Surrey life might not have changed, council estate in Rochdale you might be more eager to get rid of the current lot in government.
On MN, maybe understandably, gender ideology and labour’s uncertain stance seems to be a hot topic but does that trump the cost of living crisis or the lack of GP appointments or 24 hour delays in A/E ?
Fwiw I’m in agreement with most of the GC arguments but that won’t influence my vote for Labour.

"Levelling-up" - I hate the notion that portrays a geographical catch-up with the affluent South-East.

The Midlands and the North played the biggest roles in creating wealth during the 19th Century. The proceeds were just concentrated in London. How about simply 'Releveling' ?

But as you know, you won't be directly selecting a Prime Minister; instead, the leader of the winning party is subject to potential replacement by their party - and will continue to be under a Labour government.

However, my point is that until voters move away from consistently supporting the same two milquetoast parties, meaningful change is unlikely to occur.

I interpreted OP's question as asking what do we think is going to swing voting intentions amongst the population at large? Most posters seem to have interpreted it as what will swing it for them personally.

For me the Green Party comes closest to offering what I think the country needs:
▪︎ A Green New Deal
▪︎ A proportional voting system
▪︎ Reversing austerity
▪︎ Reforming the tax system so that the wealthiest pay their fair share.

Trying to reduce immigration is fighting a losing battle given global forces, and is counter-productive because with an aging population we need immigrants to come and work here.

Not Rishi Sunak. We know he will definitely be replaced by his party after the GE.

Agree with this though would add schools and also SEND which is at crisis point.

And I'm in a Labour area so it will probably be them.

We need more green members. It's worth joining. We are trying to stand people everywhere. And many of us really don't agree with the gender crap at all.

As much as I know that the tories have decimated education, I'm not sure Labour are going to be able to do much better it's in such a bad state. And they've not said much at all. Bar an assessment review I think.

For me the single biggest priority is to get the tories out (with the caveat that a BNP/UKIP type party doesn't replace them). Realistically labour is the only viable opposition and I don't think they can be worse than the current lot. Living costs are through the roof, services falling apart, the poor and disabled are being hammered and the sense of despondency is everywhere. These issues need to be solved urgently. Gender politics is a secondary priority to people going cold and hungry or dying while waiting in A and E. Hopefully it all gets sorted and soon.

The state of this dump:-

Potholes

Lack of social care

Open corruption

Lack of investment in major and minor infrastructure that would actually be useful

The sheer waste of billions of ££££ on unusable PPE

HS2

The joke the UK has become on the international 'stage'

Jobs, peerages and medals for the cronies

The absolute inability to govern effectively

The open ambition to wring the last bit of cash out of their positions before they go

The total detachment from the lives of ordinary people

Total lack of investment in STEM education

The lack of investment in primary healthcare and disease prevention

Basic infrastructure, the health, welfare and education of the population (and, therefore, the resulting workforce) should be paramount and everything, EVERYTHING has gone downhill under the Tories

Life expectancy has gone backwards, more people are long term sick than ever before and we're looking abroad for crucial infrastructure project management and employees because our own population are unable to do this stuff

I agree with your views on taxation and the voting system.

However, the continual influx of immigration, many of which become net recipients, exacerbates strains on public services and worsens housing shortages, and resembles a Ponzi scheme.

It also disregards crucial points around security, integration, and the fabric of the nation itself - if you don't have borders then you don't have a country; what you have is an economic zone. Few people will sign up to potentially give their life in defence of an economic zone, as recent military recruitment and retention figures demonstrate. Some had grown to believe that these things no longer mattered, but unfortunately, recent global events highlight the continuing relevance of security and defence, and the importance of being willing and able to defend national interests.

Also, this influx contributes to the UK's status as a low-wage, low-productivity economy.

On Labour's agenda, have they outlined plans for substantial increases in public spending? I fear that austerity may be here to stay regardless - we simply have endlessly increasing demand for finite resources.

*Georgeduhamel · Today 14:58

@givenup123 I agree. That’s where a decent manifesto comes in but also articulate engaged representatives who can explain it, answer questions etc unlike Corbo who just got cross.*

i think Starmer (& Reeves) can do that which makes it even more puzzling to me that they don’t /won’t.

I’m the voter that they want …. I’ve voted for all three parties in my lifetime and I’m in a seat that is a ‘swing’ seat ….. I’m a Labour vote for the taking but I’ll probably not bother if they can’t be bothered to tell me what and why to vote for them. And I know a lot of friends who feel the same way. I just can’t understand why they want to be elected on an ‘at least it’s not the Tories’ platform but apparently they do. All this will achieve imo is a totally disengaged ‘middle ground’ electorate and a Labour victory that will be undermined by being on a v low turn out. Labour are going to win so why not win well?! I’m mystified.

I would argue that you are looking at the effects of immigration through the wrong end of the telescope.

Immigrants are net economic contributors.

Top-down funding decisions about paying for - or rather, not paying for - public goods such as housing, and public services such as health and education, strain the social fabric, not immigrants.

Our decades- (centuries?) long culture of rewarding the already rich with unearned wealth, rather than fairly and adequately paying workers for their labour is not driven by immigrants.

The asset-owning class chooses to keep wages low, partly by using immigrant labour and pitching 'us' and 'them' into economic competition. In this race to the bottom all but the asset rich lose out. Their wealth has ballooned in recent years while the rest of us have got poorer.

The blatant disregard of, and contempt for, the common good by the rich and powerful has helped to erode our sense of trust in, and loyalty to our nation, and decimated our wish to fight for it.

I accept that dislike of mass immigration is a powerful motivating force for many people. However the pressures that cause and contribute to it are increasing not decreasing, and I think that battling against those is futile.

I agree that austerity is here to stay unless Labour is willing to implement radical economic reforms.

Bang on @Gingernaut

I'd also add polluted /poisoned waterways

Disgraceful housing situation...we don't need more 'luxury 3/4/5 bed properties... we need social housing, an end to BTL mortgages that sting renters when the mortgage rates go up and an end to pushing out council tenants by the thousands from their homes and life long communities in London to other counties where the London councils have bought up thousands of new builds /redevelopments thus ensuring there are no affordable properties /social housing for the local residents.

Vast numbers now of children absent from school. What exactly is being done to ensure that these children's education is adequately provided for?

Oh I could go on, and on, and on...

There are lots of reasons why addressing the immigration issue is important, as I've previously discussed. While I won't get into an extended debate, it's worth considering that if immigrants were substantial net contributors, boosting GDP per capita, nations would vie to attract them, and there would be a surge in prosperity for the UK akin to discovering new oil fields based on this ever-growing resource. The benefits would be unmistakable and areas like Bradford would be booming.

I do find it contradictory to argue that immigrants both suppress wages and benefit the economy. I don't believe it's a free choice by the asset-owning classes to keep wages low; rather, we create the conditions for them to do so via an unlimited supply of cheap labor. There are historical examples like the aftermath of the plague, where labor shortages led to rapid wage growth.

On government action, the pandemic has shown that they can enact and enforce unprecedented policies, up to and including business closures, travel restrictions, prohibitions on visiting family, and mask mandates, when there's sufficient political will to do so.

It seems that the government in fact has significant untapped potential for action when they actually desire to do so.

But they will tell you the whats and whys when they release a fully costed manifesto, which will happen once the election is called.

It's odd how people ignore that this is the way it works.

Sunak might delay an election until December. Between now and December anything could happen, we have seen in the past 4 years how the world can change overnight. That is why all political parties wait until the GE is called to finalise their manifestos. Plus of course there is always the danger of the Tories nicking policies.

@Lea3 Thank you for your thoughtful and substantive posts which have provided much food for thought.

But they will tell you the whats and whys when they release a fully costed manifesto, which will happen once the election is called.

Ah, yes, the release of the biggest works of fiction of the year. From all political parties!

Immigration

Economy; NHS; social care; education; housing; and just the fact that the government seems totally incompetent.

Cheap labour being imported (initially from E Europe after the EU expansion of 2004) to fill skill gaps and do the jobs we UK residents don't want to do, because they are hard physical and/or humble (like picking fruit, veg and flowers or care work) worked for a short while, but the plumbers and electricians who were qualified to EU standards made money hand over fist and could underprice their trade qualified UK counterparts. They turned up, cheerful and competent, tidied up behind their work, and now they've been sending money home to build/buy the house they want in their home countries, they're going back to be middle aged small business people/managers and enjoy their success while enriching their own economy, and who can blame them? My friends and family all went to the Middle East for exactly the same reasons in the 1970s and 1980s.

The people who complain are the folk who cannot muster the courage to move out of their comfort zone.

I do wonder if the problem with immigration is that they aren't allowed to work but are cooped up in hotels which costs the taxpayer money. It's not great if you have no purpose in life

It's not about blaming individuals; rather, the government bears responsibility. No government should endorse or exacerbate a scenario where their citizens are undercut by imported foreign labor. To prioritise the welfare of its own citizens is a fundamental obligation of the government. I wouldn't support a political party that fails to acknowledge this fundamental principle.

Prioritising the interests of their own citizens is an obligation that the governments of the last 30 years have failed epically.

I think it’s coming round to to bite a few on the butt tbh

Politicians lacked foresight

My dream party would put more £ into:
•Mental health services
•NHS
•Education
•Scrap the academy school model
•Claw back the strides wed made with women’s rights
•Make it easier for parents to stay with their children for their early years.
•Bring back Surestart centres
•Tax the rich more heavily and hold huge corporations to account re paying tax
•Scrap all the Rwanda bullshit
•Make dentistry easier to access
•Put BJ in prison for crimes against humanity
•Make 0 hours contracts illegal
•Scrutinise the charity status of religious and independent school organisations
•Sort the fucking roads out
•Make ADHD and ASC assessments easy to access and statements easier to obtain
•Redesign the entire secondary school system so they were less like pleb factories / prisons and more like primary schools
•HRT easier for women to get
•Companies to be financially penalised for every minute you were kept on hold trying to ring them- YES - YOU HMRC!
•Scrap ofsted
•Bring in fines for parents who abuse teachers

@Meadowfinch well said!

I pretty much agree with that and talking of sen I've never felt labour fully understand the needs there.

My dream party would understand and employ actual experts to tackle the usual stuff eg school and NHS.
But they would talk to people from all levels and encourage anonymous reporting in those areas.